The Big Picture - The Top Five Ethan Hawke Movies and a Double Shot of Richard Linklater, With Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklater!

Episode Date: November 17, 2025

On today’s action-packed show, Sean and Amanda dive deep into the two newest films from one of their favorite filmmakers, Richard Linklater. Before diving in, they react to a handful of movie news headlines, including Tom Cruise’s honorary Oscar at the Governors Awards, the new teaser trailer for the live-action ‘Moana’ film, and Georgia Oakley’s upcoming remake of ‘Sense and Sensibility,’ starring Daisy Edgar-Jones (1:14). Then, they discuss ‘Nouvelle Vague’ (16:06) and ‘Blue Moon’ (28:11) and explain why they found the former to be an interesting exercise and the latter to be one of the best movies of 2025. Later, they break down what makes Ethan Hawke such a great actor and rank their five favorite performances of his career (46:07). Finally, Sean is joined by Hawke and Linklater to explain why 'Blue Moon' was the perfect project for a collaborative reunion, explore how they have evolved as filmmakers and performers over their illustrious careers, and discuss why they feel optimistic about the current state of moviegoing and the challenges both the industry and society face (56:29). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guests: Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklater Producer: Jack Sanders Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

With Amex Platinum, you have access to over 1,400 airport lounges worldwide. So your experience before takeoff is a taste of what's to come. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Conditions apply. This episode is brought to you by Peloton. Breakthrough the busiest time of year with the brand new Peloton Cross Training Tread Plus, powered by Peloton IQ. With real-time guidance and endless ways to move,

you can personalize your workouts and train with confidence. helping you reach your goals in less time. Let yourself run, lift, sculpt, push, and go. Explore the new Peloton cross-training Treadplus at OnePeloton.ca. I'm Sean Fennessey. And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about life and death. And art. And art for sure.

On today's episode, we'll discuss two new. Richard Linklater films New Veil Vogue, which is now available on Netflix in the United States, and Blue Moon, which is expanding in theaters later this month. The former is a recreation of and homage to the making of Jean-Luc Goddard's Breathless and the dawning of the French New Wave. The latter is Blue Moon, an elegiac portrait of the lyricist and musical theater legend Lorenz Hart, which stars Ethan Hawke in one of the year's great performances. Later in this episode, Amanda, I will have Richard Linklater and Ethan Hawke here for a conversation. I don't know if I could name two people that I like that. I like.

more or like talking to more that have been on this show before. And to have them together was very special. It was a very good conversation. They were here. They were sitting right in the seat that you were in. Not on top of each other. There was a third chair here. Ethan Hawk was third chair on the big picture. And he was in the middle. He was right in the middle. That's cute. He middled. And

it was honestly quite moving. They're obviously great. We'll talk about their films here as well. But before we get into the two new Linklater films, let's talk about the true beginning of the Oscar season, which started last night, the Governor's Awards, were held, and there were a handful of Academy Honorary Awards given out, along with the Gene

Hirsholt Humanitarian Award. Now, normally, we would just talk about this event in passing and just cite who the people are for years. These awards were given out on the telecast. I wish they would go back to that, but they no longer do that. This year in particular seems like it would have been a good time to do it, in part, because the most famous recipient of all the recipients? Well, Deli Parton won the Humanitarian Award. She was not able to attend because she has been ill, But let's just, let's put Dolly Parton aside. Don't you dare try to compare. Dolly Parton is a world historical icon.

She's not Tom Cruise. She is not known in the same way that Tom Cruise is. I don't think that we needed to pit them against each other like you did. Well, the Academy did by putting them on the same show on the same night on a Sunday night. Debbie Allen, the great choreographer, actress dancer, also was given an award in Win Thomas as well. But Tom Cruise received an honorary Oscar last night. So there were a lot of photos circulating last night of Tom Cruise holding an Oscar. statuette and looking grateful. To this, I say, give him a real Oscar. Like, this doesn't count.

As I said to you before we started recording, write a novel, and give Tom Cruise a real Oscar. You know, no half measures for me. So that's fine. It seemed like a nice party. Literally everyone who is involved with award season or who is running for an award this season was in attendance, except for Bradley Cooper. He was at the Eagles game, watching the Eagles. barely squeak by the Detroit Lions. I really want to know what's up with their offense, but that's a conversation for another day. You know, I picked the wrong year to draft

Saquan Barclay on my fantasy team. I got to say, this has been actually quite challenging. I just let, I don't actually watch the games anymore because I have to be in charge of two children, but I, you know, I check the score as just a mood indicator to know what I'm walking back into. And it's just been three nothing in the fourth quarter, like five times this season.

It's just not really the explosive offense that we're looking for. It's not. For more of those takes, So you can turn to any of the Ringer football podcasts there are great many of them out there. The Tom Cruise Honorary Oscar, of course, for his work in movies for the last 40-plus years, he talked about the fact that, you know,

he doesn't think of movies as something he does, but something that he is, you know, that he is a person who makes movies. Yes. And he used some familiar lines that we've heard in his speech last night. He is also running. He's just running a year early.

Yeah. You know, the person who handed him this Honorary Academy Award last night was Alejandro Gonzalez, Inorritu, the filmmaker that he's just finished a film with that is coming out next year, next summer, in fact. And many people believe that this movie will be a bid for another Academy Award to pull a Paul Newman, who famously received an Honorary Academy Award before winning for Best Actor. In a film with Tom Cruise.

Yes. Does this next summer give you any pause? Not really. Okay. I think Sinners came out in April and it's doing just fine. That's true. The paradigm, you pointed this out to me many times over the years, the paradigm is kind of shifted there.

Right, but not for any of Reto film. No, but he's a unique case where, for the most part, his films have commercial viability, and they also tend to draw water awards-wise. You know, Bardo, that was not the case for Bardo. I was literally trying to remember the name of the Bardo. That was a nice kitchen that they had in that apartment. Yes. Okay.

That stays with me. The towel work was beautiful. I see. Got it. Moving on. Congratulations to Tom Cruise, I suppose. I agree. I think an honorary Oscar is a nice thing, and I do like it when it recognizes someone who's been doing great work.

Every time we talk about it, and every time they come up in the context of the show, they're about people who definitely deserved at least one real Oscar and all they could muster was an honorary Oscar. It's an also-ran award. It's fine. Okay. Moving on. We saw a teaser for Moana this morning. Yes.

We watched it together on this very laptop. Yes, and it was just breathtaking. It was truly staggering. No, so there's a next year also, in addition to this in a read-to Tom Cruise movie, one of the other big event movies of the year is a live-action remake of Moana. Moana in my home rings out. It is a truly important cultural artifact. It is a film that is going to be 10 years old in 2026.

And so that means that this live-action remake, which candidly looked like it was animated. yeah um is it it looks like as you said it looks like avatar it did look like the island the water the creatures i mean that you know avatar the way of water is beautiful in its own way see okay so this is my point here obviously we we've struggled both of you and i have struggled through the duration of this entire program with the disney live action remakes we don't like them we don't really get the point of them this one in particular feels bizarre because moana is still very much a part of the consciousness we just saw a sequel last year people kids really We watched these movies all the time.

But more specifically, like, there's not even that sense of, like, recreating an ancient magic that you might get in a beauty in the beast or even in a Lion King. The Lion King was the most recent largest gap between original film and new film. I think it was 25 years. We're not talking about 10 years gone by. The other thing is that Dwayne Narak Johnson is reprising his role as Maui in this movie, but he's not. not to be seen. At least his face is not to be seen in this teaser. Does that indicate anything to you? I mean, it's been a rough three weeks, six weeks at the box office and in movie world for Dwayne The Rock Johnson. I don't know. This is a teaser, as you said. I don't know. What is

your daughter's relationship to Maui? She thinks he's funny. Okay, but she's watching it for Moana. 100%. So they're making this for the daughters of the world, not for people who are going to be like, hey, the rock is in the new live action Moana as the rock. I think Moana tends to bridge the gap between the young male and young female audience. Right, but young as opposed to parents who are like, oh, hey, it's the rock. Yeah, you know, the songs, though, the songs are good. Okay. Like really good.

Let's go. Let's hear it. I could do where I'll go from start to finish, which I think is a masterpiece. Okay. What is that song about? What is it expressing? It's about the yearning and desire to break free from home. Sure.

You know, to find your own path, to be a way finder, the way that Moana becomes a wayfinder. It's part of your world. It is absolutely in the tradition of Ariel's journey. I think that's part of why it's one of the good Disney films. I don't... Be updating some of our concerns about Ariel's priorities. Yeah, she's...

She's, yeah. Moana's not driven by a man. She's in part driven by a demigod. Or by things. That's true. You know? She's not covetous. She's not materialist.

She is, but Celine's song probably does like A Little Mermaid. Sure. Probably Moana. If she's in a Zootopia, one imagines. Zootopia, too, I don't have it on the schedule. Okay. What are we going to do about that? It's going to be like the third biggest movie of the year?

I'll take Knox to see it. In what condition would we discuss it? Because like I'm looking at the schedule. It's like, wow, we've got to have a J. Kelly conversation. Right. We're going to talk about sentimental value. At what point is Zootopia, too, figure in. Any thoughts?

I mean, you don't want to do a double header? double header. You don't want to do half J. Kelly, half Zootopia, too? I guess we could do that. Speak to the two halves of ourselves. You know, inside me there are two wolves. I guess so. I guess that's something that we can do. Speaking of, I don't know if there are wolves

at war with this announcement, but this morning we learned that Focus is going to be releasing. We means you. I've known about this. Oh, you know, this is going to happen. Okay, I didn't know about this. So there's going to be a... We've also talked about it on this podcast. No recollection of that. That's fine. You don't remember. anything but I say that's okay you know every single label that has released every single of the

10,000 blue rays that you own but you don't remember actual recorded conversations that we have together about things that are interesting to me continue what do you think that says what do you think that indicates I am not surprised to learn it but I now the rest of the audience has it confirmed okay to put this out there there will be a new version a new adaptation of sense and sensibility coming next year from focus that is going to be directed by a georgia oakley with a script from Diana Reed starring Daisy Edgar

Jones it's officially dated for next September it's 30 years later after your

beloved 1995 classic that's true which I would like to note that is being re-released

in theaters in December or limited re-release for its 30th anniversary I'm excited I will be

there is this a good idea to readap this? The thing about Jane Austen

adaptations is that they plentiful. You know, this is, they have made a million pride and prejudices and also spinoffs of Pride and Prejudice, Pride and Prejudice set here, you know, that Bridget Jones Diary is an update of Pride and Prejudice. Clueless is a update of Emma. Like it's, they are both used, like, as the actual text and also inspiration. So you can't say like, oh, sense and sensibility is sacred and you can like never remake it. There is also, I believe, a TV show of Sense and Sensibility

the, like... Yeah, apparently there's a 2008 version, which I'm not familiar with. Yeah, exactly. Like, they keep on doing this, so you just have to pick the versions that mean something to you and stay true to those. It does feel less picked over than some of the others. I mean, I think it's a, it's a weirder story. And also the 1995 Angley version written by Emma Thompson, starring Emma Thompson and Kate

Wenslett and Hugh Grant. and the late Alan Rickman and Hugh Lurie and the list goes on is an absolute classic. Like it is very, very hard to live up to. And, you know, the Pride and Prejudice is the holy most referenced of the Jane Austen texts. And for a long time, it's most celebrated or most famous adaptation was a TV show. So then when Joe Wright came in to make a movie, there was something that was slightly different about the format. This is a movie to, this is a film to film thing, which I think is, you know, playing with dice, you know, a little trickier. But it's fine.

What are you going to do? So just reading this, I would have thought, I saw Georgia Oakley's previous film, Blue Gene from 2022, which is an interesting movie. And I would have thought that the version that they would have pursued might have been a modern update or a retelling. I was watching Heda this morning, Nia DeCosta's adaptation of Hedda Gobler, which is like a reinterpretation of that. This morning, it is 9.58 a.m. right now. So what time did you start Heta? 7.30. Okay.

When my family went out of the house. Wow. Yeah. I'm about this life. No, I know, but I just like, I mean, that's fascinating. Good on you. I'm doing the work. Okay. This is what we have to do.

I mean, I also do the work, but I'm just like sitting there with a hair dryer at 7.30 in the morning trying to get ready for this shit. You know? This all comes naturally. Sure. This level of beauty. My point being that I would have thought that this film would have been a kind of a reimagining like Heta. Right. Which is an interesting movie and we can talk about it down the road.

Just looking at set photos, it does look like it is holding to traditional. period. Yeah. And, you know, that's interesting, I guess. It makes the comparisons more stark, more specific because we already have a film that is from this period of which the book is written. But this happens. You know, they've made little women every 30 years since movies started.

So my issue is that the wonderful Katrina Balfe is playing Mrs. Dashwood, which is just a real, like, we are all old together that she is. How old is Mrs. Dashwood supposed to be? She's old enough to be a widow and have two daughters of. of quote-unquote marriageable age. Obviously, they scaled everything down back then, but I don't know, she's at least mid-40s. Katrina Belfth is less than three years older than me.

Right, but, you know, it's tough for all of us. It's just more like we're the parents now. Smoking. Wow. Ireland, represent. Let me tell you, Belfast, an incredible movie about how hot she and Jamie Dornan are. I've never seen anything like it. I suspect we'll talk about this movie a lot more when it comes out.

Yeah, will you go see the 1995 version? I watched it for this podcast. I know. And your take was like, your take was like, I don't really get, like, why women are so stressed. That was what you came with. A common refrain on this show. Yeah, all right. No, I liked it.

I did like it. I remember. Did I not like it? You did. I think I was a little more down on the English patient in our movie swaps. That's true. Yeah. Sense and sensibility, I liked a lot.

Ang Lee, one of my faves. Very beautiful. Will you read the published journals that Emma Thompson kept during the filming of sense and sensibility? They're wonderful. Okay. Maybe I will. Okay. How long is it?

It's not that long. It's out of print. I was thinking last night as I went to sleep, like that I should get it out and read it again. It's a comfort read for me when things are a little stressful. You know, I talk to... So after I find it, I'll give it to you. Please do. I love a journal during a production.

Yeah. It's really, it's very cool. And she's talking about, like, you know, they're making... adaptations. She's throughout the production process because she's a screenwriter, but she's also in it. And it's wonderful.

Sounds great. When I was speaking to Linklater and Hawk, we got into a conversation about reading and just like how it's harder to read now that it used to be for not just young people, but older people as well. And it's interesting because this is a pair of movies that are not about reading per se,

but do feel not just from a different, era, but from like a different time in film sensibility. You know what I mean when I say that? Yes. I mean, they are for sure. And they are both period pieces about making art almost

50 years, more than 50 years ago. And about two forms of art that definitely feel of a time, of a throwback, if you will, in a musical or just kind of standards for musical theater and the films of the French New Wave.

Let's talk about the latter of the two, the later of the two, which is a film that was made more than 65 years ago. Jean-Luc Goddard is Breathless, which is the framework for New Velvog. So this new movie is written by Holly Gent and Vincent Palmo. The same duo, I believe, that wrote me in Orson Wells, which is sort of the last time that Linklater went back into a period of examining a great artist, making. something in this very specific somewhat true way. The film stars Guillain Marbeck, Zoe Deutsch, Aubrey Doulin, Bruno Dreyfuss, a handful of others. It's, as I said, it's an attempt to

recreate, if not totally to the truth, at least the essence of what it was like to be in Paris in the late 50s, has this cohort of film critics turned filmmakers started achieving great success. and this film focuses very narrowly on Godar right on the verge of making and then ultimately filming breathless. I mean, it has a day-by-day breakdown of what is going on in breathless and is, you know, titled, like, day four or day 20,

you know that there are 20 days of shooting. So it's, we'll start with me, Valvog, but I do think that these are a very interesting pair because they are both about the creation of art, and they are about an artist at a certain phase of career. And Nouvelle Vag is the really ambitious young guy starting out, has a dream, trying to make something happen, uncompromising, sort of ridiculous, sort of endearing. We can talk about whether this movie likes good art as we talk about the film.

Blue Moon is about an artist who has achieved something and who is at the end of his career and is having a hard time letting go. So I really do think that they bring out the best in each other. I think Blue Moon is more successful on its own. But what I liked about Nouvelle Vogue was because I had just seen Blue Moon a couple weeks ago. And I was like, oh, so you, you know, you worked with Blue Moon. Linklater works with a long-time collaborator and Ethan Hawk, and it is an end-of-life movie, and very sad and very affecting. And this, in a lot of ways, is Linklater going back, I mean, it's going back to the beginning of a career, but also going back to the beginning of his career. I was thinking a lot about the walk and talks through Paris in Before Sunset.

This is filmed in Paris. It looks beautiful. and is about someone very exacting and pretty delusional and definitely annoying and a bunch of people being annoyed with him and also not quite being able to keep up. I think that it has a lot of, it's made with a lot of empathy for everyone involved in a really nice way. Like it's kind of a loving, nostalgic portrait of a bunch of kids who kind of kind of, knew what they were doing, but also definitely didn't know what they were doing at all. I think all the stuff around it, especially at the beginning, and I guess at the end, though I wish there had been more about the editing room, personally, which is an incredible

thing to say about a film. And it is more compelling than just the recreation of a day-to-day. You know, we have breathless. Notably, this film does not show us a single frame of breathless. It shows us lots of the making of, this kind of breakneck but also moving at a snail's pace. Yeah. Trip through Paris with these two, primarily with these two actors. It's a really strange movie.

I watched it a second time, and I'm glad that I did, because I watched it in the reverse order that you did. I saw New Velvog first. New Velvog premiered at Cannes, Blumen premiered at Berlin. And so both of these movies have been in the world for some time, but they're only just now getting seen by wider audiences. Newvillevilleville, the first time around, felt a little bit like what I'll call

namesome guys cinema, which is a thing that baseball fans talk about when they, as you've seen Chris and I just saying men's names from who played third base in 1996.

Or no. It's always their early 80s Cincinnati rats. Yes, yes. And there's something very sweet about Linklater, you know, who is a massive cinephile

and started the Austin Film Society and has seen everything and, you know, loves the New Wave, has been talking about the new way for years and years and him just getting the chance in this very specific period way where he's shooting on Kodak film in black and white, you know, the aspect ratio, even the way that the subtitles are written on the screen. It just feels like you're watching a movie from

1959 or 1960. That's very comforting. It's very fun. It's very fun to cast an actor to play Jean-Pier Melville. It's very fun to cast all these young actors to play Chabreau and, you know, to play the Truffaut and all the familiar faces from that period. in time. It felt like a little stunky to me I think because breathless is already

such a well-chronical film. You know, there's so much scholarship, those journals that you were talking about that

Emma Thompson wrote. There's a lot of journals. Godard was kind of breathlessly tracking every step that he took across these films.

That's something that the critics from Cahue de Cinema were really good at. They were really good at like materializing their ideas about movies and not just about

what's in a movie, but how to make a movie, how to sell a movie, what an audience thinks a movie should be and what we think a movie should be. And the film does communicate a lot of that. And when you're in the Cayeta Cinema office or when you get to go to the film with them and then have them like shit talking it afterwards, that stuff is very charming and fun.

That stuff is my favorite stuff in the movie because it felt the most like everybody wants some but for the new wave. Whereas just like friends hanging out, shooting the shit, kicking ideas around making fun of each other. There's nobody in the world who's better at that than Richard Linklater. Like, he is the master of that kind of a hangout movie. The actual making of the film stuff I thought was kind of interesting only insofar as how much tension can Zoe Deutsch bring to the film as Gene Sieberg. Right.

And whether or not you believe that she actually was like really struggling during the production of it and like mad at him all the time, which is very reasonable. Yeah. His producer is also mad at him. He's working in this very difficult way where he's waiting for inspiration to strike. He's trying to follow Roberta Rossellini's, you know, call on like, you know, philosophical. digressions about the way to do things. That's a great scene of driving along in the car. I love that scene.

Yeah, it's wonderful. Everything that is like that, everything that is like Chris Sabo played third base for the Reds, that stuff is so good. And everything that involves poor Zoe Deutsch having to speak fluent French in her American Gene Seaberg accent. And I was like, I can't. And I know what this is like.

And I know that Gene Seabberg did not have a perfect French accent in the film Breathless. But let's be real. Everybody, there's only, there's only, There's only so much. Well, it's not, it's not anybody's fault. It's just the structure of the movie of having to have everyone. It's implausible and grating. Yeah.

She looks like her, though. Totally. The pixie haircut and the styling of the film, the production design of this movie is pretty amazing. Oh, no. It looks beautiful. And that's another thing where it was just very, yeah, comforting and charming. It definitely has charm.

To be wandering around for a while. And, you know, they go to Cann and there's. that a conversation had while someone's doing like a pin-up can photo shit. I was like, all of this, the vibe is very good. It's just, once you're recreating Breathless, I mean, Breathless is currently available to stream on HBO Max, you know, which I then did go do. Yeah, I didn't do that.

It's funny. So I rewatched it last night with Eileen. I'm sure Eileen and I watched Breathless 25 years ago, but I haven't seen it in a very long time. And I was just trying to situate her in what this movie was. and what it was attempting to do. And it's a little hard about it halfway through to be like, so what are we really worried about here?

If you accept it as a hang, I think it works really, really well. If you're looking for something that is sort of like driving in some way, it's not that kind of a movie. Most Linklater movies are not really like that. I do think, though, that it's very consistent, and Godard's point of view on making this movie is very consistent with what Linklater is interested in, like, his ethic. You know, it's like work with your friends, trust your gut, acknowledge tradition, but try to break your own path.

Like, all of these things, they just feel like they're things that resonate deep inside of him. You mentioned something interesting, though, which is like, does this film like Goddard? I think that it has empathy and recognizes what's going on. You know, the Godard and the link later, like the filmmaker is obviously the stand-in for the other filmmaker. but there was some knowing, lovingness about the way that this person is young and idealistic and, like, preposterous and, but impassioned and believes in what he's doing, that I think, I think Linklater is rooting for him. I think the film is, yeah, of course, which, like, how could you not? But it's also, like, you know, what an idiot sitting there being like, no, no, no, we're done for the day after two hours. Which is seemingly not the way that Linklater would work either

And it has learned how to survive within independent filmmaking for a long time I think he obviously has a tremendous amount of respect for him I thought this when I first saw the movie And then Linklater confirmed it too that he was like I'm really more of a true foe guy And the humanism of true foe just seems much more in step With what Linklater is usually after You know, Gondar is this very

kind of like dogmatic almost ideological, hard-edged figure in the history of cinema. He has that great scene where they're fighting about the continuity of the cup, which I did think was very funny

and he's just yelling. I mean, like, but what is real? Like, the reality would be that you can't recreate it. It's also in French. But it's very funny. It is very funny. And it is, and it gets to,

you understand that Link Later relates more to a different style of filmmaking, it's a funny idea and also just a funny portrait of what it means to be like a young, idealistic artist setting out which I do think that

Linklater has a lot of affection for. He definitely does a staggering resemblance across the cast. Guillaume Marbeck It's true. Just looks just like Godor. I mean I think anybody who has that kind of like Widow's Peak hairstyle and is slim and can wear

shades, you could pull it off to some extent but he really captures what we imagine at least the energy of him to be at that time. And that helps the movie a lot, a lot of the other historical figures, even if we don't really know what those people were like. It feels very close, and that goes a long way. You know, what was it, the Linklater? He cited a recent example of trying to find someone in a movie that looked like the person that they were representing. And he was really appreciative of the work that was done there.

I want to say it was in Justin Chang's piece about Link Letter that was in The New Yorker a few weeks back. but the attention to detail is what makes this movie I would say more or less successful. It's an interesting experiment. I mean, and the production design and the, I mean, I did, I was sitting there being like,

okay, so clearly they were in Paris, but like, how did they do this? This isn't, you know, which is, it's worth seeing. Definitely. Definitely worth seeing fun movie. I'm not quite sure internationally how it's being distributed. I know in France it's playing in movie theaters.

I think it's only, in the U.S. on Netflix, but definitely fun and worth seeing. Yeah. Let's talk about Blue Moon now. Yeah. So this movie is written by Robert Kaplow, who is the author of the book, Me and Orson Welles, was based on, but he did not write that screenplay, but he did write this. This is his first screenplay.

He's also, did you learn this related? Do you remember The Watcher? I did. I read this, yes. So, yeah, he's involved in. So the Watcher was a Reeves-Weedaman, New York Magazine story from. five, ten years ago. Adapted into a Netflix miniseries?

Yes, which Kaplow was involved in because he was not actually the watcher or living in the house that was part of the watcher, but he lived in the same town and was also doing some watching of his own or something. At first, some thought he might have been the watcher, but then he was not the watcher. Yeah, but I'd check that out. Interesting life for Robert Kaplow. this movie that he's written is quite fascinating

it sounds like it was written many years ago maybe more than 10 years ago and that Hawk and Link Leather have been circling it for a long time it's been more than 10 years since Hawk and Link Later made a movie together.

They've made nine movies together. They're one of the great cinematic partnerships certainly of our lifetime and this movie is set in 1943. It is about Lorenz Hart, the lyricist who is

confronting shattered self-confidence in a bar. It's an all-in-one-night movie for the most part as his former collaborator, Richard Rogers, is getting set to arrive at Sardis, the legendary New York City theater bar after the opening night of Oklahoma.

Exclamation point. Yes, which is his first piece working with Oscar Hammerstein, the composer who would then go on to create one of the most successful duos in the history of musical theater. Prior to this, Rogers and Hart were a tremendously successful duo

who made musical theater and wrote some of the great songs and standards of the early 20th century in America including Blue Moon and also My Funny Valentine

which is referenced in New Belbag That's right. That's right I forgot about that. So Linklider was for years apparently a huge fan of Ella sings Rogers and Hart which is an Ele Fitzgerald album that features 20 of those standards

performed by her and this is I'll just say one of my favorite movies of the year I think this is just a tremendously beautiful and sad movie and kind of the inverse of New Velvog where New Velvog on its surface you would think would be tough

and difficult and underneath the surface is actually a very warm and kind of sweet movie about friendship and about success and about pursuing something that you believe in and achieving it and this movie is the opposite

it's a movie that on the surface you have this smiling Ethan Hawk who's got his head shaved and has got a comb over and has been shrunk down to five feet and is very sweet and charming and charismatic but right underneath the surface within the first five minutes

embittered and wistful and just like life is not even slipping away but like has slipped away and you can watch that reveal itself in real time over the course of the night desperate and unloved is how I would describe this version of heart.

And I think it's like one of the best things Hawk has done in years and very out of his traditional range. And also, it's just a great all-in-one place movie. And it's hard to make an all-in-one-place movie entertaining and interesting. And the way that this movie is shot and blocked is unfussy, unshoey. It's not trying to do too much with the fact that it has limitations. But I was like just tremendously emotionally engaged in this movie. What did you think about Blue Moon?

Oh, I loved it. I mean, any movie that starts with the characters quoting Casablanca to each other, no one ever loved me that much. I mean, it's, and it uses, this is a movie that loves movies and like, you know, old Hollywood as much as we do. And it's very much built into the text and to the script, which I think is very good. In some ways, it is like, you know, a play but a movie. But I mean that in the best possible sense, where it is really focused on it. It is like tightly rich. written. It has ideas. It's focused on the performances. People show up for kind of one or two scene arias and it makes the most of what it has and is, you know, just a very, I agree, very sad. Very sad movie. Movie about being really old and not being able to. But not that old. Right. To your point about Katrina Balfe, I believe. I believe Hart was 46 years old. That's why we're also like, oh, God, you know, life is coming for us. This film does the thing that you normally don't like.

Shows you something at the beginning. Yeah. I didn't love that either. Okay, even here, even though I do find that that choice sets the tone. Because I honestly, I don't know what, before this film, I didn't know about the life story of Lauren's heart. You know, and I don't know his outcome. I mean, I know what happens with Oklahoma. just incredible theater criticism of Oklahoma throughout this movie.

It's really, really funny. But I, and, you know, so I know that he, I know that Rogers and Hammerstein go onto great fame, but I didn't know the pretty sudden tragedy that happens after this film. And so knowing that does help you interpret the film in a different way because it's kind of, it's all. sort of a lost cause, you know, and there's like, he keeps, he keeps talking about, so Andrew Scott

plays Richard Rogers, Richard Rogers, thank you, sorry. And they keep talking about how they're going to revive, and I'll play it with five more songs, and there is, and, you know, and that's presented. A Connecticut Yankee, yeah. The heart character is like, this will, you know, I'll be back in and this will be my big break. And I think we all know, because of the way the film opens, Like, even if that does happen, it doesn't matter. This is not going to be the beginning of another career. So I think functionally, I understood the decision. That's interesting.

I, it's the only thing that I really took issue with in the movie. I also did not know much about the life of heart. I was happy to not know much about it. I think the movie does that very interesting thing where it allows the character to kind of talk through their own personal history in a way that felt mostly naturalistic in the setting. It didn't feel like forced exposition. No. And I think if you remove that opening sequence where we see him fall in the rain. Yeah.

For someone who didn't know about the person's life, it would have felt more dramatic. It would have felt, and the sort of revelations about the aftermath of this opening night of Oklahoma, I think would have felt stronger, more powerful. It would have been a little bit more tear in my throat than it ultimately is. I guess so, but it's not, the movie is not a mellow drama, you know? it's like an elegiac, there is something, you're watching this guy and it's like it's over before it started. And that is what the film and the character is about. And he is the only character who has not quite made peace with that.

But to understand what's going on with him, I do kind of think you need to know the contours to get the full. I don't know. It worked for me. Setting that aside, the other thing that I think this movie shares in common with Neville-Vogg is that to use a word that you used to describe Godar both of these movies are about delusional men

you know like men who are just like convincing themselves that what they're going to do and what's going to how everything is going to work out and in one case someone is incredibly successful and another case

someone fails miserably but that there is something too about the I think a sensitivity to artists people trotting things which is just a really vulnerable strange thing like you and I get in front of a camera

and we talk at each other and it's fine and it's vulnerable but not Like when you're like, here's something I have poured my soul into that means the world to me. And Hart in particular, a writer who was sort of moving out of fashion in the mid-40s in terms of the style of comedy lyricism that he was gifted at. And also like a sense of how the world was changing. You know, this is like amidst World War II.

And there's a kind of optimism in Oklahoma that is completely absent from most of what Hart pursues. He can write a romantic song. Right. But it's usually a little bit more pointed and cultural. And, you know, Rogers originally went to heart to write Oklahoma. And he turned him down. And then Rogers turning to Hammerstein leads to this.

Oklahoma, Carousel, South Pacific, the King and I and the Sound of Music. Yeah. I mean, I think that's the most successful collaboration in the history musical theater, probably. Yes, absolutely. But, you know, those are all pretty sappy. I say that as the world's number one satin music fan over here. but, you know. I can't pretend to be an expert on the shows of Rogers and Hart

because they're actually just so out of fashion that they're not produced as often as the Rogers and Hammerstein stuff, which I've seen most of and most of I just don't think is that great to me. But people love them and heart being a known genius who's washed up is as tragic as it comes. You know, just like the way that Hawke embodies this incredible, sense of sadness, without having lost his wit and his intelligence and his kind of nascent, annoying charm?

Right. There's a charisma that is kind of like flickering in real time and the bitterness and the alcoholism and the delusion breakthrough throughout the course of the film. But every once in a while, he just steers it back to something, just completely effervescent and amazing and you're like, oh, this is who this person was and just cannot get back there and life won't let him get back there.

Another thing that this movie shares with Newville Vogue is that there are a handful of famous figures who crop up in the story. These are significantly more invented than what you might see in Neville Vogue. For example, at Sardi's on this night, sitting at a table by himself, writing in his journal, is E.B. White.

Yeah. E.B. White, seemingly at the doorstep of writing Charlotte's Web. And Stuart Little because they literally He gets inspiration for Stuart's name And how to spell it from heart I don't think that's actually how that happened I don't either but it is written into the script of the film

They reference it you know I really like that little jag where E.B. White comes in is kind of like the gentle observant conscience Of creativity for a short period of time And then there's like a fairly amusing but also a little silly introduction of a very young presumably Stephen Sondheim who is neighbors with Oscar Hammerstein and who, you know, joins him at the premiere of Oklahoma

and has seen every musical theater performance and has some withering takes for the work of Lauren's heart. Right, yeah. And it's just a funny, like, nudge in the ribs of any musical theater fan. Just Sondheim obviously would go on to kind of take on the mantle of the greatest living musical theater writer.

I mean, probably immediately after Rodgers and Hammerstein. Yeah. I guess so. This movie is, this doesn't usually always work for me when an actor is like, I'm doing a biopic or I'm recreating a figure of transforming.

Yeah. I'm hair and makeup. We're going to use trenches to make me seem smaller than I actually am. And Ethan Hawk, he never does this. That's true. He never wears makeup. It's very naturalistic.

Yeah. He almost always embodies a version of himself. It might be in the year 2,300, like in Gattaca, but he still looks like Ethan Hawk. Yeah. And I thought this was a fascinating choice. There's also a small, low-budget movie made, I think, in 15 days. Which would have been pretty challenging.

And I think it's like among the best things he's ever done. He's wonderful in it. And I think I want to talk about the Margaret Qualley character, who is for lack of a better term the love interest, though how that works out is in keeping with how things work out in the rest of the film and is kind of another dimension to,

I don't know whether it's delusion or denial or self-hate. But it is very funny to see Ethan Hawk not getting the girl mode or not even close to I asked him about this. I asked him specifically, like, I can't think of a single time

where you played the guy who cannot get the girl. Yeah. And the level of self-hate, that's the other word that I use, this self-loathing that Hart has. Heart was believed

to have been a closeted gay man, but he proposed to multiple women and wanted to be seen as a... A man about town. Yes, exactly. And maybe even like a conqueror in some ways

and was constantly falling short of that. And in the film, Barger Qualley plays a young woman named Elizabeth Weiland who is a Yale student who's an aspiring musical theater composer and wants to be in this world and she befriends heart and they have this kind of confidant relationship and he feels romantic feelings for her or at least says that he does and she is sort of sort of leads him on in part so she can he can introduce her to some people but she also seems to have affection for him but certainly not in the way he keeps asking for um I think

there's an extended sequence of them alone in an office that runs a little long for me. Yeah. I think modern quality is well cast. I think this is like actually a good use of her, yes. And what her kind of wide-eyed beauty represents and her ability to sort of like be one step ahead, but at the audience thinks she's one step behind for most of the sequence. So I like that part okay. It does, it's just kind of the final nail in the, in the coffin.

almost literally of heart's ego and his sense of self-worth right and also his the idea of himself versus the reality of the world that he's living in

do you think many successful people feel this way have this intense sense of regret longing failure when it runs out yes how do you know if it's run out I mean I think you know

I'm just asking for a friend Yeah, this is a very sensitive portrayal of somebody who is losing it. Yeah. And I really like it. Hawke. Well, let's talk about Linklator really quickly. Okay. So he's 65 years old.

He did not. He does not seem it. His hair is brown. Yeah. You know, he's in good shape. Still seems like an athlete. He's in the midst of this production of Merrily, we roll along. Right.

Speaking of Sondheim. How many years? Has it been now? I think it's been less than 10. So I think he's about a third of the way through. Okay. Maybe a little more than that. And the plan is to film until 2040.

Okay. And he's doing this with Paul Meskell, Beanie Feldstein, and is it Ben Platt? That sounds right. I think it's Ben Platt. So he'll be 80. So he'll be 80 at the conclusion of this production. It is Ben Platt. So that is, you know, he's obviously done this before with Boyhood.

these kind of durational projects over time. I think Justin Chang also pointed out that this is sort of his version again of what Shufo did with Antoine Donnell, like this idea of tracking the same character and the same actor over a long period of time,

but in this case he's doing it in stand-alone movies. Yeah. Which is just one of his ultimate, fascinating, time-based innovations. But just in the last few years, he's been very productive. He made the RotoScope animated film Apollo 10 and a half a few years ago for Netflix, and then Hitman last year for Netflix,

and then now Nouvelle Vogue and Blue Moon in the same year, very vital at the stage of his career. He's made over 20 movies. Good for him. He's fucking killing it. He loves to make movies. What are you going to be doing at 65? I don't know.

I'm reading a very grim book about the future right now. What's the book? It's the New Ian McEwan novel. Oh, yeah, you've been anticipating it. It's wonderful. It's really, really good. I'm almost done, but it's not optimistic

about what any of us will be doing at 65. What's the name of the book? It's called What We Can Know by Ian Kuhn. I see. So that'll be 22 years from now for me. It's 22 years will be 2047. Okay.

My daughter will be 26. Oh, that's fine. I can be dead by then. Okay. That's fine. I got to get to 21 for my daughter. That's the most important thing. Her age.

Yeah. You need to get, and then good luck, Alice. Well, I don't want to die, but if I die, it'll be okay. Okay. I won't fight it, you know. That's good. I will fight it. I'll fight it tooth and nail.

Don't pull the plug on me, as George Carlin once said. Okay. I mean, I, you know, I hope you have other arrangements for that written in your will. No, you're the first call. When I'm on my death bed, you are the first call. Because I trust you to be unsparing. It's the matcha or the three ensemble Cado Cephora of the fact that I just just to deniches

who I'm energize all the time? Mm, it's the ensemble. The format standard and mini regrouped, what aben?

And the embalage, too be able who is practically to do you know, and I know I'd like the Summer Fridays and Rare Beauty

by Selena Gomez. I'm, I'm sure. The most ensemble the gift is atop Cepora.

Summer Fridays Rare Beauty, Way, Cifora collection and other part of Vite. Procurry you see form

standard and mini, regrouped for a better for a C4. or in MacG

or Magazen. Before we go to Hawk and link later. I want to talk about Hawk quickly. Yeah. So I hope he gets nominated for Best Actor. I genuinely hope. It's an extremely competitive year. Yeah. And this is a small, this is our, but listen, Sony Pictures Classic has done it before. No doubt. They're amazing at this. Never forget the wife. Yeah, well, I have forgotten it, but I know what you're saying. Let's very quickly go through Best Actor before sharing our favorite Hawks. Okay. So at the moment, Well, look at this glamour shot.

Which is looking great. I mean, he's always looked great. He's also on the lowdown on FX, which I haven't started watching yet, but I intend to watch over the Thanksgiving break. Along with Andor, I'm going to set movies aside for a week. Wow. Watch some television. Okay. I'm going to be on an airplane with two children under four.

Yeah, a blue moon of your own. Good luck to you. I'm so excited for that week because I'm not going anywhere. So at the moment, Variety has, here's the top 10 for best. actor in reverse order from 10 to 1. Clooney for Jay Kelly, Plymonds for Bagonia, Dwayne Johnson for the Smashing Machine,

Brendan Fraser for the rental family. I still haven't seen that. Nor have I. Jeremy Allen White for Springsteen. I can't believe we're still doing this. Michael B. Jordan for sinners. Wagner-Morff were the secret agent. Timothy Chalomey for Marty Supreme.

Yes. Leonardo DiCaprio for one battle after another. And in the number one position, Ethan Hawk for Blue Moon. Who has this? Clayton Davis, said variety. Okay. This was published on September 26th.

Okay. I take issue with some of that ranking. I would love that for Ethan Hawk. I don't think that he is in pole position. Is that the correct usage of the term pole position? It certainly is. Thanks so much. Sounds like you've seen F1.

I was actually going to ask what sport it's from. So good. As a counterpoint on October 23rd, Awards Watch said that Ethan Hawk was in 11th place behind Will Arnett, Dwayne Johnson, Jesse Plemons, Jeremy Allen White, Joel Edgerton. I don't think that's right either. Yeah. This is almost three weeks going on too.

I mean, I think Michael B. Jordan, yes. Leonardo DiCaprio, yes. Wagner, yes, still haven't seen that film. Great movie. I got to figure out how to talk about that movie. I know. I'm very excited, but I just, who is the fourth guarantee that I'm forgetting right now?

Leo. No, I already said Leo. Leo, Wagner B., and Timothy Chalemay. Oh, and Shalmay. Of course, yeah. Gold Derby currently has him at fifth, so that's a little bit in the middle between the two. I think that's probably right.

And that's what I'll hope for I think that would be an awesome five That would be close to what I think Are the five best actor performances of the year And that doesn't usually happen But this is a really really competitive year I think some of the lower You know I think Brendan Fraser

And Daniel Day Lewis And Russell Crow for Nuremberg Like those are not really I haven't seen that yet That's also going to be part of the HEDA episode Where we talk about 10 movies that we didn't talk about Okay so HEDA Nuremberg What's it called? The Choir?

Corral? The coral. The coral. I just, the, the trailers before my blue moon screening were just like an incredible 1998. Yeah, the SPC rundown. Sony Pictures classic throwback situation. I like those.

Have you seen Surratt? No, but don't tell me anything. Tell me nothing. I'm going. What about Kiss of the Spider Woman? No, with respect to Jennifer Lopez. I will see it. Yeah.

We haven't talked to a ballot of a small player. I know. That's just on Netflix. Got to see that. It is. Yeah. The lost boss. I threw that on last night.

What did you put on last night? I threw on Ballad of a small player. I completely forgot it was out. Okay. It's not very good. It's a disappointment. The Lost Boss? The Lost Bus.

Oh, the Lost Bus. With Matthew McConaughey. Oh, right. These are all in theory. Yeah, we're going to do. Listen, we're going to get there. We're going to get there. Hawk.

We can do this fairly quickly. Yeah. We match on one movie? I did that. Well, two movies. Yes. And I put, I matched at number four so we could be cute with our lists. what do you think makes him a good actor

um i there is a a uh an um i don't know he's just so cool honestly like there are like a bunch of different things that i was trying to describe but like he's very like he's you know very calm and like he sits back but also really emotionally open there's like a physicality to him i don't know i mean i saw him in reality bites when i was like 11 and I was like that's it

that's what's going to haunt me for the next 35 years of my life I know what you mean I think he has changed a lot as a performer over the years I do think that he was really puppy dog as a kid and in one of your picks and had this kind of like G. Willikers kind of

anxiousness to him as a performer and then he really like almost does the exact opposite in his 20s where he pulls way back and he's cooler than cool you know when he's in is it Hamlet, the modern adaptation of Hamlet, in reality bites, of course, like in a lot of those 90s performances. And then in the 2000s, I feel like he goes back the other way. He goes back to

this, like, he has a kind of jitteriness to him, like in training day, where you can right on the surface, you can feel, this is a person who's having a hard time. And he's not, nothing is settled. Yeah. And being able to toggle between those two energies is very cool. I mean, I do kind I think, like, for us, it's just an emotional register over time and, you know, an up and down that I recognize, you know, of being, like, fairly earnest in your teens. And then what I thought was cool was also what he was trying to be. I have just kind of watched him go through the phases of life about five years ahead of myself and feel about them the same way that I do. That's exactly what I mean. He's somebody that it's very easy to map your own experiences onto. because he's made a bunch of movies about going through those experiences

and obviously the Before trilogy is signature in that, but a lot of his movies are like that. So he's a special guy. Yeah. He's a special actor and one of the great podcast guests, so I'm very excited to hear your... It's just an awesome talker, you know?

He's read a lot and seen a lot, and he loves music, and he's just into figuring it out and is very eloquent in it conveying how he feels. So hopefully people will enjoy that conversation. Before we get to it, do your five, and I'll do my... Okay. I put dead poets at five, which is just how I remember, probably the first time I saw him.

And also, you know, that openness that I do think characterizes all of his work except for the 20s when he's, his 20s when he's trying to be an asshole. I put blue moon at four because you also have blue moon at four. I do have blue moon at four. It's extraordinary. And him trying something different, which is cool. Boyhood at three. Boyhood, not my favorite link later, but it is as much a study. of, I mean, it is a study of Ethan Hawk over time and what they're doing together and I've not seen divorced dad energy represented so clearly. And what he and what Hawk is doing like in terms of vulnerability and and like openness and also anger. You know, it's the full gamut of what he can do over time. It is that like career that we've been talking about. Him picking up Eller Coltrane at

the house in his muscle car is like gives me to yeah sad chills. Yeah. Two is reality bites. Yeah. I've seen it. Yeah. Great film. And then number one before sunset. Yeah.

I know you go by. You go by. I know. My number five is Training Day. Yeah. Which is he's been very good over the years at toggling between mainstream Hollywood movies and projects that light him up that are a little smaller. He obviously also loves the theater. Training Day is like the perfect fusion.

of the two disciplines that he is interested in where it's like it's a big time Hollywood crime movie opposite Denzel but they both get to do really interesting work as actors in it and I would argue that we would not think about that Denzel performance in the same way if he was opposite a lesser actor because I think that movie is like pretty well written

but not really that well written and it's like pretty well directed but not that well directed but you're there for those two guys exploding and some other actors on the periphery as well but those two guys specifically bouncing off of each other. I also had bloomed at four. I agree with everything that you said. I have before the devil knows you're dead at three. The Lumet crime movie. Ethan mentioned Philip Seymour Hoffman during our conversation. They're magic opposite of each other as two very different but very similar

brothers. Before sunset is number two for me. Number one is first reform. Sure. It's first reform season. Boy, it sure is. Although Pope Leo, the 14th. Pope Leo. I mean, he's really, he's coming through for cinema. Sure. It's beautiful, yeah. What if I went back to the church? We'll talk about that. There's another movie where we can talk about it. Why not now? What if I rejoined the church because Leo hosted a great number of filmmakers

at the Vatican? Greta Gerwig was there. Yeah. You know, Spike Lee was there. I mean, I appreciate all that he's doing. The Pope? Yeah. For cinema, I guess. He says you should go to the movie theater to see films. You know who else says that? You.

Yeah. And me too. Yeah. Should I be the next pope? Yeah. I think you do a really good job. I think I've earned it. You know, you have the outfit already from our Oscar show.

I do. I do. And Concleve taught me how all that stuff works. So I'll be really good at winning that race. But first reformed. Paul Schrader also came up when I was talking with Ethan. Man, that movie, I should have fought for it for 25 for 25. That movie fucked me up.

I love that movie. And that movie is also so on the money about how everything feels right now. Yeah. So on the money. And Ethan Hawke, again, is at the center of it as a desperate person who's lost hope and can do that just as well as he can do Lorenz Hart. So he's a wonderful actor. Any closing thoughts?

I'm excited to hear you talk to the two of them. Okay. Let's go to my conversation with Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklader. Richard Linkleader and Ethan Hawk, back on the show here to talk about Blue Moon. Guys, it's been 12 years since you made a film together. I was stunned to learn that when I was reading up on your long-term collaboration. Was there anything that came up in the interim? 10?

10 since boyhood. Well, 14, that came out in 14. It didn't. Yeah, okay. But we shot this in 24. It was a 10-year gap of us rolling camera. Was there? We were in a horrible fight.

Yeah. Sometimes I didn't speak for what, nine? Yeah, he is these temper tantrums. Then he comes and he apologizes. And he falls off the wagon and it's a real thing. I just have to, at some point, you have to cutoff thing. So this is an art-reflecting life situation. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Did you, were there any other things that you were thinking about doing in that time? Like, why the break? God, I hope so. Ten years, we better have thought of something to do. Yeah. We're always throwing around things. No, this was, Blue Moon was in the works before. He gave me the script to Blue Moon before we finished.

I'll be like in 2012? No kidding. Am I close enough to the microphone? Yeah, yeah. Sounds good. Okay. Yeah, this was something been kind of rolling around in our heads for a long time.

And we would get together in New York, usually because Robert lives, he's in the area. Ethan's there. I would be there. We just kind of do a table read and talk about it more and just kind of, it's working with Robert over the years on the script. In fact, I was so impressed with Robert's patience

with our methodology, you know, because we really enjoy doing readings, talking about it, thinking about it, because you knew you never get a second chance. It's not like a painting where you can do one version of it and then a year later try it again. It's like we were going to have one shot to make it right. So we took our sweet time.

I felt like we were building up to something. And it's such a minimal. When we shot it in 15 days, it's a no-budget movie, all that stuff. And yet it was we treated it over these years as some kind of really thing that we would just have to perfect and it would be hard to do. How did you know it was? the right time to do it.

I knew because he said so. How did you know? Ethan tells these jokes about when he first started as like, well, you're too young. You're too tall. It took Ethan all those years to lose the height, actually. About an inch a year. Inche a year. Yeah, we finally got there.

It's funny, though, because you were 10 years ago around the right age for Lorenz Hart, but maybe didn't look, you weren't ready to look the way that he looked at that time in his life. Well, 54 is 47 back then or whatever. Yeah, definitely. There was some, I mean, that's a very simplistic way of looking at it. We also knew that the thing about a movie like this is the bullseye is extremely small. And if you don't hit it exact, if you don't penetrate the exact bullseye, this movie's not really even a movie. It has to, for it to ring the bell, you know,

it to vibrate and sound right. We knew it had to be just right. And so we would do these readings. And Robert, it's never like we did a reading and thought, okay, it's ready to go. We would thought, oh, this is a great idea. What is it? And then Robert would have some ideas, and he would go back and Rick and we would all talk. And then, but there was no time pressure.

So it would be like six months later, Robert would send a new draft. And we wouldn't read it aloud again until we were all in the same city again. Which might be a year and a half. There goes another year. You know, and then we would do it. And the same conversation would take place, and certain missteps would happen. Scenes came and go, came and went. Yeah.

You know, we were breaking. We were just kind of, it was getting more minimal. And the last reading we did was really fantastic. We were at my house. And I remember it was over and everybody left. And we both kind of were like, wow, we're ready. This is the time. It was great.

I felt, okay, I'm ready to go in rehearsals. And like, we're shooting in, you know, a month. month. Yeah. That would be, I think we're ready to get, we were that close. And in the meantime, I had gotten a lot older and also strangely felt more ready to try a lot of the parts that I've done in my life are variations on something you might call close to my own identity. And this was a farther push out. But I really felt I loved Larry and I felt like I'd grown up with people like Larry, my whole life in the theater, this movie is intimate with those men.

And so I really, really wanted to do it badly. And I really believed that we could do it and do it well. And now I feel, after so many years of every, it's like a to-do list in your brain that you have, and Blue Moon was always there. We've got to make that. We've got to make that. I can't believe we've checked that one off.

I still, with Margaret last night, I was sitting like, God, wow, it was a couple years ago. We were sitting there with her. We got all of our, we went to Castelizabeth. It was like, God, I wonder if Margaret Qualley would, and sure enough she met with us, really liked the part, totally got it. Years ago, we said, well, we got to get Connavalli to play. When we were first talking about, we were like, you know who should be the bartenders,

Bobby. Bobby would be amazing. But, you know, actors availability and all that, we just got lucky. Everybody was in. And then Andrew Scott came aboard. That was really the crucial piece, the last piece. Are there like 10 or 12 other projects like this for both of you guys? We're like we're checking boxes.

We have things that we know we want to do. 10 or 12 is a lot, but there's certainly a bunch. Yeah. Interesting. Because sometimes the universe isn't. It's never on your time schedule. Yeah, you know, a project like this, we need the right partners, you know, to come through to help finance it. You know, this is nobody's doing this.

movie because they think they're going to make a quick fortune. You know, they have to kind of believe in it. And we have several projects like that. Unfortunately, none of our projects seem to have their finger on the pulse of what America really wants to be watching. But we've had some that have never gotten made and some that might still. Since you guys hadn't been on set together in a long time, had either of you changed in any way? Was there anything that was different about actually making a movie 10 years later?

I wouldn't say either of us had changed in any way that affected anything. It's just the demands of this particular film required us to be different. It was a different vibe. I want to hear about that. The challenge was such that, well, I knew it. Even in the readings we were doing, I was like, I'd look at Ethan reading it a little as Ethan. I was like, oh, he doesn't know what he's in for. This is all going to go away.

You know, he would put an emphasis on something. And then so I knew this day was coming when we had to sit down and like really get into this. And I was like, okay. And that was very difficult. Yeah, it was like, this all has to go away. That's a masculine, confident, Ethan gesture from a guy who's six feet tall and, you know, used to get laid a lot. See, Larry has none of that. I can feel that now.

That was the biggest difference in the table. years ago but it actually it's he's not lying it I didn't realize that and and Rick did and but this is devout there's a it's a weird um razor's edge to walk when we all love the idea of long-term collaborations but it's very hard not to get sick of your friends it's very hard not to tire of him. And sometimes it's very hard to be honest with your friends, you know, because it feels like things are at stake. It's not just a movie. Like Rick and I can't go make Blue Moon. I can't let him down or disappoint him or have a fight with him and walk away from the movie. I'd be walking away from a 30-year collaboration. It's bigger than one job. And Rick was

really giving me the opportunity to be the actor. that he knew, as a young person, I dreamed of being. He knows who my heroes are. He knows the kind of work that I find significant and important. And he was giving me that opportunity, but it wasn't going to happen just by showing up. You know, all the things that people like to talk about, you know, whether you're talking about movies where people gain weight or lose weight

or joking about the height or hair, shaving the head, or, you know, gestures, voice, all that stuff is meaningless if it doesn't, unlock something true and something with soul to it, you know, all those details are things that will ruin the movie if we don't get it right, but they won't actually give the movie the heart and soul to make it worth your time to watch. So this one had, this one had so many things we had to work on to, like on before, the before trilogy, for example, I'm being asked to play a certain position on a team. And this movie was like, Like, I was in the same team, but I was playing a different position than I'm normally asked to play, if that makes sense.

Can you give me the literal position change that you made so that we can even deepen this metaphor? Like, are you moving from quarterback to tailback? Were you moving from tailback to right tackle? Quarterback to a water boy. In the masculine, in the tough guy. Yeah, yeah. But a very colorful water boy. A really charming water boy.

I think the better analogy might be a band. And I used to play rhythm guitar, and now I'm being asked to play the violin. You know, it's like we're like, and the band leader's the same. So a lot of, when you're on a link letter set, I think it would, if you think about your older friends, have they changed? I venture to say most of us not that much. It might be imperceptible. They may have, but you can't see it.

Our sense of humor is the same. We're still making each other laugh with jokes that happened that are citing things. that happened 30 years ago, and I still laugh, and we still find the same, I know when I'm reading something, whether Rick will like it or not, you know, I, so, you know, I'll come across, yeah, you know, I even, the other day, I was like, I had this really kind of crisis moment in my brain, something that was really profoundly depressing me, and I went for a walk, and I just imagined talking to Rick, and I felt a lot better. I didn't actually need to talk to me. I'd say this, and you'd say, well, why are you going that direction?

I'm like, oh, yeah, he's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's funny you say that, though. So Glenn Powell was on one of our shows last week, and on the show, he said he was paying you a compliment, and he said, Rick was the hardest director on me in terms of performance. He was the person who was the most direct about what I was doing and whether it was working or not.

And that some artists are a little bit uncomfortable, giving that feedback that you're talking about. Is it, do you think it's even more harsh with Ethan? And how do you even communicate that? Well, it was on this time. I try to give specific directions when it comes to performance. I think that's the best you can do, not just like, oh, go again, do better. You know, it's like, no.

Playable notes, something that is actually like, we rehearsed this, we worked on it for a long time. We knew what we were going for. But this was just different, and we knew what arena we were stepping into. This was just going to be much more rigorous. And I think, had we not had each other's back for 30 years and the other films, we had a trust. You know, I saw my friend working to his absolute limit. And, you know, this is built around his ability to deliver what the film had to. You know, Ethan has to deal off these seven-page monologues. We have 15 days to shoot the movie. I knew we could do that. We had done versions

of that before. But then this physical thing, I just, it was a deductive process. Ethan had to disappear, you know, so that was the naggy. I was a naggy, like, you know, You think, yeah, do you do that thing again? Like, it would have been, I think because we had this communication shorthand, it helped that. It was less confrontational, but it was exhausting kind of. It really was. This was, but we loved it. It was a joy.

We were so happy to have the opportunity to finally make this film. But within that, it's like, holy crap, this is, but we knew that's what we were heading into. But at the end, it was like, oh, we did it. You know, the thing that Rick's talking about, which is really. really truly remarkable, I think, is that he didn't, it wouldn't be an honor and it wouldn't be fun if we didn't do our absolute best. And so he has to be discerning with somebody that he knows really well. He's also spent 30 years of me complaining about directors, right? And as soon as I know you don't like this, but I have to, if I don't say this right now, we cannot return to this

moment. This is not as good as it needs to be. And I have to be humble enough to hear it. And and not lose my confidence, you know, and that's, that's a, and one of the things that I think what Glenn is talking about, perhaps, is that Rick can, because Rick's an athlete, Rick can be extremely direct without being malicious. There's no, sometimes you sense in directors or producers, a desire to, oh, to be crass, to pee on your shoulders or something, just to have dominance. And that creates an atmosphere of competitiveness, aggression. Rick is, you genuinely feel he wants you to excel. And so, and you know he doesn't like being mean or critical. So if he's, I would have to do this.

I remember when I was directing Maya, I had to explain. Listen, obviously, I want to say great job. I have every incentive in the world. That is what I want to say. But I can't yet. So don't, I'm not being mean. I'm not telling you you, you're doing something wrong. I'm telling you it can be better.

And it's not as good as I know it needs to be to be before we're done today. And so there's this that, but that doesn't mean it wasn't. But I do think it's so important. I remember this, it pops to my brain about, he's standing on a beach somewhere and they're asking John Lennon before he died. Like, would you ever play with Paul McCartney again? And he says, play what? He's like, I definitely would.

Yeah. Like if, but it's what? And it's not about, we can be friends every day of the year. What do we want to make together? And we wanted to make this together. Well, it has to be the best movie he can see. that we have to actually work. That's what John was saying was like,

I call him John. Yeah. But I think what do you, I always like that answer because you could see in the answer that if there was a cool idea, he would jump on it. But it wasn't just to be together.

The point can't be that we're to like together. Then you're making Cannibal run five. Yeah. Well, which is a great film. We would watch your version of Cannibal Five. Well, why was, so I think I understand why you wanted to do this and why you loved Larry. But why did you want to tell this story?

Well, those same reasons. I love Lorenz Hart. You know, I've been a big fan all these years since my 20s when I discovered his music, I would say. And when Robert told me he was writing a story about him because I knew a little bit about his life, kind of the, you know, a little bit of the tragedy and Rogers moved on.

And he was a beloved character, you know, if you ask anyone. Okay, Rogers. Heart or Hammerstein, almost everyone says heart as the lyrics. Musicians, yeah. Yeah. But the shows, you got to go with Hammerstein. Those are still performed. It's a different era, different era, different time, but there's something endearing about heart. And so just his life and what I read in the script is something that we never isn't expressed much or talked about in artistic world, you know, circles, but it's kind of that an artist would have an expiration day that you could be left behind, not only by your collaborators, but by the

times. It kind of lingers in your mind. It's something kind of sad and poignant, but like an athlete's career comes to an end just biologically. No ballerina or gymnast or even ballplayer thinks they're going to be playing at 60 or 50 or, you know, but every artist thinks, yeah, no, I love this. I'm going to do this forever. And in certain arts, particularly performing arts, film, theater. It can sort of be taken away from you. They can just not fund you. You can fall out of vogue. You know, you can, yeah, you need that support. So it was, I always, when I first read what Robert sent me, I said, oh, this is like this sad little howl into the night by an artist being left behind. You know, like, he said that to me the first time on the phone we were talking

about it. Yeah, it's a funny, witty, but it was kind of like, oh, that's such an interesting for a movie to be about. A guy who's kind of at the end, he even says it. in the movie in different ways. Forgotten, but not gone. That was my tagline. Yeah, so I don't know. I just loved it. It was portrait of art.

And that time, you know, it's such a fascinating little moment in musical theater history. I love that period. I love all the music. So it's hard to say what makes you want to make a movie. But it definitely got into me, this character. And also the utter challenge on how to make it work. Can this even be a movie? One room, you know, like, is that a movie?

Most would say no and people did say no for a long time, you know, but you know, we got it made. So it's a little cinematic challenge, but really a storytelling, you know, it's hard to say what makes you want to tell a particular story. I have some questions about the how you did it, the single location idea, but before that, it definitely does feel like a second half of your life movie, you know, and I feel like it will resonate more deeply with people who are like, am I at the end of this or is the end coming closer? And obviously the film is sets out of it. up to for Hart's life. The film itself is a final act. Yes.

But Larry Hart didn't make the transition into the second half of his life. You know, I see that with some of my friends.

You know, you have to keep growing and you have to keep changing and adapting, you know, maintain your curiosity and maintain

your health and these, these things that require certain vigilance to weather the vicissitudes of life,

you know, and, And Larry didn't make that turn. And I do think that that's haunting to people like us who dream of doing this at 80. And my brain is, since I was young, my brain is, you know, why is Stopper it's so great in his 80s? Why is, you know, why is this, why is Dylan still making relevant music? What happened to so many? Why did they lose?

Why did this filmmaker? Why is the first three movies amazing? What is it? is it and is it is it them is it their instrument or is it the times losing interest and my brain is fascinated by that or it's the old personal demons we're watching an alcoholic kind of put himself on the bench you know that's for sure let's not forget that yeah so yeah a lot of the people you go what happened it's like oh you know they didn't help themselves do you have do you have any fears about the time running out or not being able to do all the

things that you want to do? I don't. Illogically so. Do you? Well, I mean, I definitely feel like I'm motivated to just keep doing what I'm doing. But one of the other things is that you don't give the responsibility of your own creativity to anybody else. Right. Meaning the industry could very well just totally dismiss both of us at the... I feel like it has. You know, that's not... But it wouldn't stop you from making things. things. I mean, I remember somebody said that about Paul Schrader. If you put him in jail, he'd come out with a movie. And that's the way I feel about Rick. It's like, not, that's not going to, you don't even need the world to care. You're going to do it. And I always feel

if you left me alone, I would do something. I don't put that much weight. on people's responses to the work. Obviously, I love a compliment. I love it. And I live for it. But it's not my main motivator. I mean, that really defines our 30 plus year collaboration.

It's like we both are excited. You know, we always have stories. We're trying to tell characters we love. We're exchanging ideas. Some things become a potential movie, you know. Others don't. But, yeah.

And, you know, we're just always kind of saying forward. interview the other day with somebody who was a lot younger than you and I are and he said what must have been so hard for the fans that before sunrise to wait nine years for the next one was like there weren't any fans wait no one wanted a sequel. The only people that wanted that sequel were you and I truly yeah and Warren Schaefer yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah exactly yeah there was about five people he couldn't register like wait oh then why was there sequels that because we really like ourselves Yeah. Now, that was our tagline. The least successful film to ever spawn a sequel.

Proved to be a smart move, though, in retrospect. The other movie that I was thinking about is tape and the idea of a single location and a smaller cast. And, you know, that's, it's been a long time since that movie. And, like, the challenge of that movie, too, I was thinking about with the challenge to this movie. To your question about how have we changed, not much. Yeah. We found that. no problem real time let's do it um this film was a lot more challenging it's period um the verbiage uh the the ideas that play um but we learned a tremendous amount on tape that i think was really valuable for this movie yeah not that we did that for any other reason then to do that movie but years later it's like oh this is kind of our bigger version of that it's good

to have gone through that too because that's that from a production standpoint is completely reliant on the actors being able to, because we shot that in six days. We shot this in a whopping 15 days. So it's completely reliant on the actors being able to just kind of us be able to shoot for seven minutes straight. And, you know, I have two cameras, and that's just kind of the technical, we can't be fumbling around, figuring out what we're doing. We have to shoot all day. And I have to get long stretches of dialogue. And we can do as many takes as we need. but it has to start off pretty close to perfect. But your desire, interest, and curiosity to rehearse,

meaning some directors really get bored without a camera in their hand. They just, but Rick can work for a long time before he picks up the camera and work, and that's what makes doing seven-minute, 11-minute, 14-minute, 17-minute takes possible, because we've talked about and worked on the nuances of the performance, the ins and outs of where the pauses are, where the rest are, when it needs to speed up, when it needs to slow down. It's like what's so thrilling about as an actor is

you're a part of the filmmaking process because your relationship with Sandra, his editor is amazing and they do amazing work together, but we're invited into that process of like he would like to edit the movie based on what the best cut is not to edit around your performance. You know, like... Yeah.

Yeah, I never feel like I'm constructing it in posts or we're putting anything together. It has to work on the day. It's always self-evident right in front of us. And I just enjoy that collaboration, too, because you find everything. I can't imagine making a movie where you just start. Plus, I'm nervous with the crew standing around while we create. It feels indulgent.

Yeah, like we have to talk intimately about every little thing, and you find so much. You know, even it's amazing what on the page doesn't, really, it works on the page and then in the room, it just doesn't work because it's not real. You know, we're all looking at each other like, oh, we're doing, this is an big opening night party. What's missing? It's like, oh, all the interruptions. It wasn't really in the script. All the people, hey, Dick, great show. You know, you can't talk 45 seconds to someone at your own opening before someone else. And like, that wasn't even in there at all. Like, yeah, what's not working? So we kind of. Wyatt, and that reminded me of like, one of my favorite

things about Philip Seymour Hoffman is he would often stop in rehearsal and go, why is this fake? Yeah, what's wrong here? Is it the line? Is it, is it the line? The first thing you have to realize what's not. It's like he could smell, something doesn't smell right. Is it the way I'm sitting?

Is it the costume? Is it the set? Should we be standing? Should we be further apart? Or is it the dialogue? Is it, you know, am I not in the right emotional space? And that's where good things happen. When you sniff that out and then get rid of it.

I wanted to ask you something. about your performance. So a lot of, it seems like hearts, when of you, artistry is born of this like self-hatred or the sense of his own

maybe ugliness and you know, you have to transform physically in the film. But I suspect that maybe you don't have the same relationship to your own appearance. You've been a star

for a long time. And that's a very difficult place to get to mentally of like that level of like, yeah, that self-hatred. There's a self-loat for your own body because, well, no one's ever noticed.

No one's ever wanted you. That was the, we talked about that. It's a great. You don't understand. Like, no one has ever wanted to be with you. Right. For your body. You have this incredible wit, mine, people love you in a certain way.

But not that way. Yeah. Yeah, so that's a huge leap. One of the things we left about was, and this was the real challenge for me, is a great story Mike Nichols would tell about Redford really wanted to be in the graduate. You remember the story? Right, yeah. And Redford called him up and said, you look, I really liked the script.

And I'm like, so, well, I love your work. But I mean, I see a question. You end up feeling when, like, you meet a girl and you ask for her number and she doesn't want to give it to you. And everybody was, what do you mean? And he goes, that's exactly why I can't cast you. Yeah. You know?

Yeah. But I'm at a place in my life where one of the things that acting has taught me is that our experiences in life are not nearly as unique as we think they are, in that we have the capability to understand each other, and our powers of empathy are very strong, and that I do know, I do not know what it's like to have rejection every day. I know what rejection feels like, and I can imagine what that would be like. I've been punched in the face. I haven't been punched in the face 90 times in the same day. Larry Hart has, but I can have empathy for that, and I can embody that. And that is part of the wonderful part of my job is putting on other people's clothes, looking through another keyhole at life.

And the powers, our imaginative powers are so, so powerful. And you can, and if things in a film, when Bobby's treating me a certain way and Margaret's treating me a certain way, and the dialogue is right, and there's this, the yeast starts to rise and there's this thing that starts to happen that can have the stuff of magic to it where you really can. I really felt for him. And I definitely understand the feeling of being misunderstood and trying to express yourself and being rejected. to try to pour that into the performance and make that real. I don't know. I just really wanted to do it. Yeah, anybody, any artist, actors in particular, I think finding a connection with someone is that's never the problem. I think we're all got our antennas out there. And in this case, a little rejection, who hasn't been rejected?

And a little bit of that goes a long way. And so he looked to someone and it's like, oh, their whole life. You know, we all grow up with people or we see someone who have certain things about them that just like, oh, wow, what would that be like? An artist goes through the whole life going, what would that be like? Oh, my God, that's a whole other world. That's a whole other thing. And it was fun to see you once you were five feet tall looking up at everybody.

You're like, holy crap, it's a different world. When you're looking up at the world and you're not kind of... And the world is so high-ist. It's amazing. I could just see it come over him. It was like, oh, yeah. Try to not let that get away. I'm curious, Rick, for you this year, two films set in the past, two films about artists.

You know, you've done things like this before. You mentioned Robert wrote the book that Me and Orson-Wells is based on. You've been in these worlds before, but what does that indicate to you about where you're at in your life that these are the things that are so compelling to you? Well, these were two long-standing, long-gestating projects that they just had. happened to come. I shot them back to back and they kind of came out near the same time. But it were just two stories I really wanted to tell. Two places in history, I really wanted to drop back in on. And I think I've done that a number of times, not only to, in a nonfiction way,

but even in the fictional worlds I've created, like even if it's a college or high school comedy I've done, I'm doing the same thing. I'm dropping a camera back into a moment in time saying this is what it was like. And it's fun to do that if that moment in time is my own life, but it's even more fun to drop it in to a moment that before I was born and imagining, oh, what it must have felt like.

Like, to me, that's really magical and fun, the kind of creative, you know, constructive element of that to put that together historically. And so, yeah. And with Nouveauvaug, just the filmmaking aspect of that, the cinephile heaven that represented to me, So that was fun.

I mean, these films are clearly in some kind of conversation with each other. You know, Blue Moon's the end of an artistic career. Newvolvo Vogue is the beginning of one. But, you know, portraits of two amazing 20th century artists, that's for sure. So I don't know. I want to ask you a big open-ended question about this, okay? Yeah. So I was thinking about this idea that you're suggesting,

which is the blue moon's about the end of something, Nouvelle Vogue's, about the beginning of something. I think among a lot of film fans there's a concern that we're at the end of something or maybe something already ended and not everyone knows. Guess what the great news about that is if they're right,

you know, every departure is an arrival. So no sooner does something end than invariably something else has to begin. I feel really strongly that something, I feel this and maybe it's just my nature,

but with the ways in which things are moving right now. It's like, oh, you know what's about to happen? Things are about to get really exciting. I think with this thing about it, I think I see a lot of the young, I have a lot of young people in my life, and I see them getting absolutely sick

of manipulated images, of stupidity, of they're getting tired of short attention span theater. It's not like we're going to rebel from a lot of what's happening. I think politically, emotionally, artistically, We all operate in a interconnected community way. You know, like it was funny.

I got to see there was Scorsese produced a documentary. He was giving a talk back. And he was talking about the early period of his career and how he just thought, oh, God, everybody's overusing the word masterpiece. Every damn movie is a masterpiece. And he's like, it was. I was living through this amazing 10 years. Yeah, looking back.

A lot of masterpieces. Oh, wow. Yeah. Bergman. Or, you know, just, you know, Hal Ashby's, like, actually, these are friends, your godfathers, yeah. It was, these were phenomenal films. And that happens because the collective thing is happening. And not just with the artistic community, with the audiences.

You know, the audiences have to care about David Bowie. They have to think that's cool. They have to be interested in John Cage. They have to be interested in Frank Zappa. They have to be interested in Miles Davis. They have to be like, and that makes the money people want to make more of it. You know, and there's this, so we operate together, you know, and this, and I do feel there more and more as we kind of get depleted, and I think what you're talking about is kind of an

exhale, but the good news about that is there's about to be a giant inhale, and I do feel it coming. I feel it politically, too. Do you feel that? Yeah, I mean, I just know film history. Let's just talk about film, because I think that was your like, is it over? is, do films matter in the culture and all that stuff? And we've always been under existential threat.

You know, if you really look at the last 70 years, it's always, there's threats. And I think whenever technology and art and commerce intertwined, there's a lot of jobs threatened, there's a lot of challenges always. So it has our little amygdala's going all the time. You know, it was like TV. Oh, that's the end of that. That's the end of that. Oh, you know, video is going to kill.

You know, so it's always been that. But, you know, there's a bigger threat in the world. And it could be the thing that interrupts what you're talking about, the audience and the thing and what people want. We have an adversary now that is coming after our attention and consciousness in a way that hasn't before. So I think that's the great interrupter. That's what up to each individual. to kind of stifle that. Do you have to save yourself. You got to admit you're addicted. We just need a group session.

You know, like, no, you have to put that down. You have to. But I'm seeing it a lot. You know, I'm a film society in Austin. I sell these young people. Just when you thought, oh, they grew up watching, you know, YouTube and TikTok. And audience is full at the theater of young people in their 20s, really discovering movies, the history movies, current movies, out in the lobby.

talking about them, having a drink with friends, community. So each individual has to kind of save themselves by participating in community and humanity and art and giving a shit and just realizing, oh, that's a fun life. Wherever you fall in the spectrum of art or just appreciator of art or consumer, just, no, it's more fun to be engaged with art and other people. And, you know, so that's how you save your own soul. but there is an opposition. There is an enemy out there who wants something else from you.

If I can, I'll risk telling a personal story. I hope you don't mind, which is that was one of the best things that happened to me this year. We were at the Telluride Film Festival, and we went on a long hike with my kids, and my two daughters were working Rick over in front of the wall, complaining that their mother and father were trying to. to limit their screen time and asking, you know, that they thought it would be better that they learned control over their own skits. It's not that they thought that I should just have unlimited screen time, but they thought

we need to be able to monitor ourselves. We need permission to this. And Rick said, well, you know, that's an interesting point. But the real goal, I'm paraphrasing, but you said something like this, which is to be your own best friend. And that phone is getting in the way of you being your own best friend. because if you're your own best friend, then your best friend's always with you.

And this algorithm and this thing is this giant distraction. Yeah, to follow your own instincts. Your own instincts. That book led to that. It's changing what you're thinking about. And you were talking about, you were telling Clementine about passing through that space of boredom that feels uncomfortable.

It's this liminal space of what the world calls boredom. And when you come through it, Oh, hours can disappear, and it's your own mind. It's your own mind that leads you to these beautiful thoughts and beautiful things. And now you're in control of where your mind is going, not an algorithm that's trying to sell you something, right? And then you, when you're through that space, there's your best friend, right? Over there. Just pass through that doorway.

It takes but a second, you know? And it really had a big impact on them. And I think that's the true adversary. very. Yeah, that used to be the thing finding yourself. That was the cliche for the last several generations. The hippies were like, I'm going to find myself. Well, you're not going to find yourself today. That's not that you're going to find yourself, you know, being delivered to advertisers. Yeah. That's always been the thing. It used to be via TV and radio. Now it's this thing that's attached to you. So it's more time to be more vigilant than ever. But, yeah,

that always needs to be in the air. I have one more layer for that question. So one thing I found maybe 10 years ago when we would have a conversation like this, we would point it at your kids, my kid, younger generations having this problem. I always think of you as one of the great daydreamer filmmakers.

I can see you in a room coming up with an idea, just sitting there quietly. But I find that I am more distracted than ever. I don't know if you're more distracted. I'm finding it harder to just sit there quietly. I'm enjoying this conversation as further ammunition to give me the energy.

I was among my friends, I was one of the last to give in to a cell phone or like people would text me and I would be like, why are, what are you even doing? Yeah, I'm never going to send a text. I'm never going to go. I'm never going to do that. Yeah, I remember saying to a friend, I said, I know cell phones are catching on in L.A.

That's never going to fly in New York. Yeah. Yeah. I'm like, who was I talking about? You know, and I feel one of the great joys of people talk, like the amount of verbiage I had to learn for Blue Moon, for example, and it was one of the things I remember most about the summer was the fact that I didn't look at my phone hardly at all because I had too much work to do.

But oh, the space in my memory it occupies now of just being in my dressing room. You know, I would roll the set, make some texts in the car, going over there, set the phone down, change, leave it in there. And I wouldn't pick it up until we wrapped. You know, in a new drive home, I'd look at it. But the day, actually,

felt so much more expansive without looking at it. You don't realize how it's contracting your brain. I know it's born. We're all thinking the same thing, but I think we do need to give each other permission to rebel. Yeah, but no, you feel it. Do I have the patients like I used to to lay around and read all day? It's like, no, what's this little thing in me that's kind of jumpy, a little irritate, little, no, I'm going to get up and I'm going to check the news feed. That's the number one thing I'm struggling with at this stage is like I would roll through 50 books a year and now if it's 10 it's shocking and that's just a huge change huge well it's really really impacting society I mean when you think about I mean even you know a literary star we haven't had a literary star

like we used to have um you know um because because literature is not the way that we're communicating and that's a huge loss um you know I just read Marilyn Robinson's housekeeping. It's an old book the day. I was like, it felt to read literary fiction again. It literally felt like, oh, oh, yeah. Well, there you are. There's my true, like, because she was speaking to me in a way that made my soul feel like it mattered, that my experiences are part of a collective experience that actually is significant. And what I think about a rainstorm and what I think about my daughter and what I think about actually has some substantive value. And I was like, oh, right, nobody's talking to me in this way. There's great paragraphs

I'd have to read three times. And the third time I read it, I was like, oh, so glad I read it the third time. It was worth it. You know, the power of the language, power of the ideas were not easily understood. And they were better because of it. Right. Yeah. And that was the delivery system. It was novels. It was poetry. It was films. It was, yeah, the interrupter there. If you're going to get all paranoid, big picture, it's like, yeah, if they can, you know, the way you go after institutions, if you can go after all the art forms and make them just not that relevant, oh, you've got a whole other population here. So we all have to stick up for our art forms and give them that kind of, you know, that space, they're still there. They are writing the novels. Oh yeah. People are making the movies and writing the poetry. It's just, it's up to everyone to elevate.

Yeah. It's, for me personally, it's a little nuance because what you're describing requires not just focus but consideration. And that's the consideration is the, that's why I like doing this show. Well, that's the hard thing to do. It's an invitation for you. You know, that's what I feel like, what I like about when I feel like a movie is made well or a book is made well. It's an invitation for you, the audience, to join us in this conversation. it's not telling you what to think it's the audience is a part of that I felt that way when I was a kid watching one for the cuckoo's nest or something

it's not telling me when the chief is running into the woods and those drums are playing and there's the broken window with the sink that's through it and I'm like I'm looking at that going what's this mean it doesn't it's not clear like wait

it's it's better than clear it's it's the great It's the mystery. Things without mystery have no power. Mystery is the reality. We do not know why we're born and why we have to die. We are living inside immense mystery. And this illusion is that you have some control or power or that you, like, things that

invite mystery are, they're giving you a chance to consider it yourself. The artist isn't right or wrong. It's, what do you think? And now we're in dialogue together. And that's what made those movies or those albums or those books. things that you could revisit. Yeah, but new waves are always in opposition to the status quo, the mainstream. Our particular mainstream of this era, as we talked about great novels and stuff,

you realize, well, those novels used to be on talk shows. You know, they used to be part of the culture. That's a producer and editor. People are making those choices. Like, oh, yeah, it's a great book. It's the book of the year. It's the best book I've read. but our audience doesn't you know they don't they don't occupy the spot on the talk show at night

but let's give that to some 21 year old who has a million followers who did this thing right because that's going to get the eyeball so you know it's just straight up money the but that's something to rebel against for sure because we have to first you have to admit the mainstream is overall pretty weak yeah yeah ironically one of my hobbies is watching those interviews on Dick Cabot on YouTube, though. But in the space where you're being assaulted at all times with other things to look at. Yeah, but it's there as a record, a historical record. Look who's on the Dick Cabin show that night.

And you have three different people like, oh, my God, what a lineup. And that's what the world wanted to, they wanted to converse and hear from them. Right. It's one of the great things about, like, when I was making the last movie stars, that documentary of a pulmonary show, is I got to watch all those old talk shows and see the other people before and after and see how meandering they were. and how intelligent they were. And it was...

The position they had in the culture was exciting. Like, who has that now? You know, even room for public intellectuals. What do you mean? You guys are here right now. We're doing it. Yeah, Gordaulah, yeah. Yeah, people like that.

We're here and we're grateful to be here. You've got to flip it. Yeah, it is this... The podcast era is kind of that is that now. That's where people get together and talk. So, you know... Thanks for contributing to this. Got to be grateful for that.

No, things we... We lament what's not there, but what is here. Yeah, this is here. There's a whole new thing. You just have to, you know, you can't really. I mean, yeah, you're absolutely right. Like, oftentimes we don't see what's good. I listened to, I think I called you after I,

but I listened to Ken Burns, who's got this revolution documentary coming out. Listen to him on Joe Rogan for two and a half hours. It was brilliant. Yeah. I mean, it was as good as anything we're mourning. It was amazing, staggeringly intelligent conversation. Yeah, there's never been a medium that gave people that space to talk. So there is.

30 minutes on. Dick Cavett is one thing. But even radio shows back then weren't, they were commercial programs. Yeah, it was 90 seconds. Yeah, you didn't get, you were on to talk about your book for five minutes or something,

but it was not the space and time to talk. So, everything's terrible, everything's great. I know. I know. It's always, it's always,

we end every episode of this show by asking filmmakers, what's the last great thing they have seen. It doesn't have to be on YouTube, obviously. If you guys seen anything good that you like, you were in Telly Ride?

You weren't tell your ride? Yeah. Well, the last thing, I have to say this is going to be kind of annoying, but I did just watch Vim Vendor's American friend. Oh, my God. And I have to say, that photography is unbelievable. Is that Robin Mueller? Yeah, that was.

I personally wish I was really good friends with them, and I could have done his second draft of the script. It was like some plot holes. He's not interested in the details of her story. Dennis Hopper and those images, they're like, they're, like, wow. And it's not flashy photography. It's just stunning, absolutely stunning. That's a great pick.

I love that movie. Yeah, I mean, this is a big question because I have modern stuff and then. Anything you like? I think, you know, I watched Story of Adele H recently. Truffaut. And I hadn't seen that lately. And it was just as beautiful. I talked to Obama yesterday

and he recommended a Truffo film as well Yeah, just small change, that's funny Oh yeah, Truffo never goes away You know, he's the guy, you know, for forever And then current, you know, like everybody Won Battle After Another, you know, things like that You know, gotta give it up Yeah, I had to, this has been happening for many years

But my just hat is so off to DiCaprio Yeah, holy shit She's just such a leader in my profession, and he's, it's just been staggering to watch. Just really, really inventive, thrilling work. You can like one, love one, dislike one, but they're always worth your time. They're always bold. They're always daring. And he and Paul together in this, or it's just amazing.

Just fantastic. And I also thought Emma Stone, Begonia, I thought, I was like, wow, who is this woman? She just keeps being great. And it's non-stop. And so, heads off to, but there's so much. There's always,

you know, I never rag on. Every year's a good year for film. Worldwide, there's always a lot of films, more than most people have time to even watch that are always, right? Blue Moon is great, too.

Thank you both for being here. Thanks for you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you to Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklater. Thank you to our, producer Jack Sanders for his work on this episode. Later this week, what do we have a minute? Number four from 25 for 25, which we recorded several weeks ago at the Egyptian theater,

or at least a week ago. And as of this recording has not been leaked that I know of. Nor I. Why do you think that is? Because we built a society of trust. Do you think that the listeners are afraid of you? I don't think that I led with fear. I think I led with inspiration. I invoked Beyonce. And I invoked mutual respect. And I gave people an opportunity for their clout photo. And then you gave them some a letterbox how-to. So, you know, we're creating a safe space.

I think the pick is good. And I hope people enjoy it. We'll see you then. Thank you.